EFP 112: Screw the Nine to Five

It’s hard enough building a profitable business on your own, so bringing on a partner can either be a blessing or a curse.

Introducing Josh and Jill from Screw the Nine to Five

This week I sit down with location independent couple Josh and Jill from Screw the Nine to Five to dig into how they manage their business partnership, marriage, and the details behind their successful lifestyle business.

This episode gives great insight into the reality of building a location independent business and debunks the “work four hours per week on the beach” myth.

Check Out This Week’s Episode Here:

Direct Download – Right Click, Save As

Topics Discussed This Week Include:

• Quitting your job vs. building your business on the side
• How Josh and Jill ditched their jobs and made the leap
• Scaling small niche sites
• The “Entrepreneurial Roller-Coaster”
• Teaching people the “how” behind getting away from their jobs
• Dividing responsibilities and making decisions

Mentions:

• Josh and Jill’s Screw the Nine to Five
• Screw the Nine to Five Podcast
• Featured Listing: Culinary/Cooking Website Making $1.5K/mo. in net – $29,406.60
• Dan Andrews’ TropicalMBA.com
• Carl’s PodcastIntros.com
• Empire Flippers’ Upcoming Events
• Dan Norris’ WPCurve.com
• Dan Norris’ The 7 Day Startup
• It’s Called Ship, Not Shit
• Branding Cow’s Empire Flippers Analysis
• Empire Flippers Twitter
• Leave an Empire Flippers Podcast iTunes Review

Spread the Love:

“You should be asking your audience what they’re interested in.” – Jill – Tweet This!

“Understand your partner’s business personality as opposed to your relationship personality.” – Josh – Tweet This!

Do you have any questions for Josh and Jill? Leave them in the comments below and they’ll answer your questions!

 

Justin:                   Welcome to the Empire podcast episode 112. It’s hard enough building a profitable business on your own. So bringing on a partner can you be a blessing or curse. This week I sit down on location independent couple, Josh and Jill from screwtheninetofive.com and dig into how they manage their business partnership, their marriage and the details behind their successful lifestyle business. You can find show notes for this episode at empireflippers/screw. All right, let’s do this.

Speaker 2:           Sick of listening to entrepreneurial advice from guys with day jobs? You want to hear about the real successes and failures that come with building an online empire? You are not alone. From San Diego to Tokyo, New York to Bangkok, join thousands of entrepreneurs and investors who are prioritizing wealth and personal freedom over the oppression of an office cubicle. Check out the Empire podcast and now your host, Justin and Joe.

Justin:                   All right Joe, you and I have talked a lot about business partnerships, the trials and errors that we’ve had. Now, I can’t imagine having a business partnership where you’re also married, man. That seems pretty rough to me. It was really interesting to sit down with Josh and Jill and cover how they manage you know their marriage, the business partnership. I don’t know man, it’d be pretty rough buddy.

Joe:                        Yeah, I mean well some people would say business partnership is like a marriage without the sex, I guess but yeah.

Justin:                   But Joe, if you’re offering, buddy. Kind of awkward [inaudible 00:01:34] like Damn like did he really say that? Are we putting that on the show? Yep, it’s going in.

Joe:                        But I think it’s definitely a hard thing but if it works for them more power to them and I think that they’re great couple of people to work with. And you know, we’ve actually had a couple of their sights on the marketplace and I like working with him. So it seems to be going well.

Justin:                   They’re awesome. I was actually bone to find out where I first heard about them was through some of the videos they do. They’re just have this couple thing going on, and their videos and they’re awesome. Talks about it a bit though and they said just a production like trying to put it on is a real hassle and they were doing it every week and it would cause like strife in relationships.

They’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to cut out the videos and stick the podcast.” They’ve got a really funny podcast called, Screw the Nine to Five podcasts that I’ve listened to a few episodes on and if you are at all are working with your significant other or plan to I’d really recommend checking it out. It’s pretty fun, and they’re fun cat so it’s a cool show.

Joe:                        Yeah, stood out about their videos I mean just the videos that we’ve seen from some of the sites that they’ve sold through us we’re very interesting but it just goes to show you that the voice and the podcast sort of medium is much better than the video medium.

Justin:                   Yeah, so much easier to produce right and so you know we have mutual friends, we’ve had mutual friends for years now and I’ve kind of followed them at that and they’ve listened our podcasts and stuff so it’s great like being here in Chiang Mai, we’re actually able to meet in the flesh, so to speak, and hang out a couple of nights and stuff. So and talking to them, I was like, I really liked their story. I like where they’re taking their business. I thought it made for a really fun podcasts. I want to have them on the show.

They’ve got a really interesting business model, Screw the Nine to Five, and they’re a little quirky, man, they’re not your uptight kind of show. It’s not you’re uptight kind of blog. I think some people get some value if they’re looking to build out their online empire. Before we get into this episode though let’s take a look at hot money’s featured website listing of the week. What’s you got, buddy?

Joe:                        This is listing ID number 40,077. Last week apparently I forgot the ID number. So I will make sure to put that in every week. We’re talking about 40,077. It was created back in May of 2013. It’s in the culinary and cooking niche. We’ve definitely seen other people be successful in this niche before. So I think it’s great that we’re actually selling one of the sites on our marketplace. It’s making about 1500 dollars a month net in profit.

It gets around 18,000 pages a month and it all come from Amazon Affiliate, so it’s pretty straight up. Doesn’t have a whole lot of content on the site, maybe about 50 pages or so. So definitely a good opportunity to just add content to it and we’re listing it just under $30,000.

Justin:                   It’s very little work require this one. I think it’d be probably a good pickup for a newbie norms. Someone like looking at just get started would like to enter realize some of that cash and would like to expand it through content. I definitely think it’s expandable. If you go with a branded products, let’s say for this particular niche, I think it’d be Spandex. There’s a ton of different brands out there that you could target and do some comparison stuff. I think there’s an opportunity for some higher level content here to if someone really want to put the work. Anyway man good find. Let’s get into the heart of this week’s episode.

Speaker 2:           Now, for the heart of this week’s episode.

Justin:                   I’m really excited to have Josh and Jill, their location independent power couple. They’re actually staying here Our Golf Tier with me in Chiang Mai, getting this done. they got their start building a niche affiliate sites. You guys created screwthenineto five.com where you help others create lifestyle businesses, dumped the job, get away from it all that kind of thing.

Jill:                          Definitely.

Justin:                   It was a crazy funny show called, Screw the Nine to Five podcasts. I just listening to a few episodes today as I was planning before the show. You guys talk lifestyle, business location, independence, you dig into some of your successes and failures, talking about things you absolutely don’t want to do or don’t want to get with your business partner. That was pretty cool.

The shit you don’t need [inaudible 00:05:36] one episode and you guys are building your businesses location dependent couple. I’ve already fun to have you on the show. It’ll be a really interesting, I love your guys podcast. You guys got great chemistry and hopefully we’ll get some of that. We can borrow some of that and bring it over to our show.

Jill:                          I guess we can.

Josh:                      Let’s do it.

Justin:                   I got to say I love your videos I’m kind of bummed that you were going to be dropping some of the videos you have as a location independent couple that were you guys worked together, you’re business partners. How do you keep … we were talking about this before the show, how do you keep from strangling each other and just wanting tear your hair out when you look at your partner and you’re-

Josh:                      First I let jill-

Justin:                   So that the first.

Jill:                          That’s number one. Let Jill speak first. I think it’s evolved over time like our first year of business, we were stressed out in a shitty apartment. And we were working around each other non-stop. So tensions were high, plus it was a year we’re getting married … Don’t do that. Don’t start a business the year you’re getting married. It’s not a good recipe.

And then the second year we started co-working. We got involved with the whole community here in Chiang Mai. And we still worked around each other a bit, but we’re sort of starting to separate a bit more. and now I kicked Josh out of the apartment by like 10 a.m. and he’s not allowed to come back to like 4 p.m. So we’re very separate now. So that’s how like, keep things separate and kosher and loving.

Josh:                      This in your eyes like an evolution. So I think over time, when you start working together, you really get to know your partner, you know what I mean? Because you’re put in kind of more stressful situations as result of that, you start to understand that personality a little bit more. So I understand what Jill’s personality is a lot more now. Occasionally, you forget and occasionally you do the wrong thing, we’re going to continue to learn obviously but now we’ve kind of reached this point where we know what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are and we can kind of play to that almost.

Jill:                          Yeah.

Justin:                   Yeah. We joke around consume my business partner, and I we had some of the reactions his but we know the or partners or do you actually partners like life partners? Like look, I mean, we fight like real life partner, and it’s just a business thing and business partnerships can be difficult. And so if you’re doing with your husband or wife, I could see how that would be really stressful. Why did you guys come to Chiang Mai? I mean, there are a ton of … I see there’s a bunch of other entrepreneurs but Chiang Mai. The location is an dependent thing, you can be anywhere. Why is this a place that kind of resonates with you?

Josh:                      We came to Thailand almost three years ago now for the first time, and that was just on a trip, it was on a holiday. So down in the islands down south, we really loved it. Right? And went back to Toronto and we heard about the DC right, we heard about the Dynamite Circle through a friend who was living in Toronto and we were like, I will check this thing out. So we joined it pretty quickly, because I think they were in the open for like a day or so at this stage.

Then we found out there were all these people living in Southeast Asia. So people living in Vietnam, in Thailand, in Bali. And we really love Thailand’s and we were like why don’t we just go out there and just see what’s like because we have a location independent business now. There’s no reason why we have to be in negative Heidi, in Toronto, so why don’t we just go out there and try it out. And that’s what we do. We went down to that islands that we first went to on a trip, and we were there for like six weeks, and we quickly-

Jill:                          Started itching, we were like must get out.

Justin:                   So that was like a vacation Island and stuff but there’s no other people to connect with? Was that kind of the problem?

Jill:                          Yeah, we met a few people.

Josh:                      The was no one and the internet or-

Jill:                          Yeah we met a few people, the internet was a big thing. But it’s funny, because when we first made the plans, we’re like, we’re going go live on this island of like 3000 people, and we will live there forever. And then six weeks later

Josh:                      [inaudible 00:09:22] a tree house.

Jill:                          … let’s get us the hell off this island because a, the Internet’s bad. It’s not the most conducive space for working. And I don’t know, we just crave the community, and the community is happening in Chiang Mai. And that was something we were hell bent on getting ourselves around, and talking to other people who got it and not just being surrounded by a bunch of scuba divers.

Josh:                      Yeah, I mean, it was kind of funny because we had no intentions of going to Chiang Mai, because we’re like, why are we going to be in Thailand and I’ll be on the beach. So that’s why you come to Thailand because it’s got beautiful beaches and stuff.

Justin:                   That’s just wrong.[crosstalk 00:09:55].

Jill:                          We are downtime right now.

Josh:                      Why are we going into the mountains? It’s crazy but as soon as we got here, we met up with just so many people so quickly. And at that stage that was the thing that we needed for our business. We needed more ideas, needed to meet new people to be out of like,

Jill:                          Try to shop and downtown ideas.

Josh:                      And find out what other people are doing. So we can kind of figure out what our clear path is going to be.

Justin:                   You just need some of that as an entrepreneur especially in early stages, right? Like you know, there are people listening this podcast that have jobs right. They have careers, or they have their own business, and they’re doing it back in the US or Canada or whatever and they hear about this thing like, oh my god you know the beach, or I can go to Chiang Mai or at least you know Hoshi, all these cool places, and it’ll be awesome but they don’t realize like comes to some loneliness.

When you’re building your own business being able to connect with other entrepreneurs are going through a similar thing it’s just fantastic so I get the Chaing Mai thing. Right now it’s changed mine Hoshi man where my girlfriend I actually heading off to Hoshiman in November. I think Joe is going to come out there as well. So we’re doing a little bit of both. I know there’s a battle there’s the Chiang Mai, Hoshiman battle going on.

Jill:                          Josh has been wanting to go to Saigon for a long time.

Josh:                      Yeah. Well, we just got back from Hanoi, which is an interesting place as well. It’s hasn’t really got the hub of online entrepreneurs like what Saigon has, but I really enjoyed the pace.

Justin:                   I mean, that’s one of the things that you said, when you first get started, you need to be around a lot of people, you need to get a lot of ideas and things like that as you progress with the business I think you’ll priority sought to change. Like for us now we’re actually planning on moving back to North America, because we can see that the growth of our business is going to be directly related to us being on that side of the world.

Josh:                      Yeah.

Jill:                          Yeah, but for people who have like eCommerce businesses, or niche sites, or whatever it is you’re building, even if you manufacture your own stuff, like whatever it is, if you’re not reliant on time zones, and building an audience that is heavily North American base, you can live anywhere. It doesn’t just have to be Southeast Asia, it can be all over Europe, there’s hotspots in Europe, Barcelona, Germany, it could be in South America and go to Colombia. Like there’s so many options not just Southeast Asia but-

Justin:                   Let’s go to Columbia.

Josh:                      Columbia, and do some cocaine.

Justin:                   Let’s just say that I am one of those guys, I’m driving my car, I want to do this lifestyle, I want to do it. You guys must get this a lot where someone reaches out, and they say, “I do wish I quit my job, should I keep my job and kind of like do something on the side?” What’s your advice? Because we don’t deal with that space all that much like I like it and we support that, but it’s not like our main gigs where I get the question a ton. What’s your answer to that when someone asks you?

Josh:                      My initial thing I mean we’ve spoken to a lot of people who are in our audience, and the ones who progressed fastest aren’t necessarily the ones who quit their jobs and go cold turkey and try and figure things out. Actually those people end up going back to the job is relatively quickly.

Justin:                   Do you talk to a lot of people that happens to, I never hear that. I never hear the story from the people that tried, bought a one way ticket to Bangkok, try to build our business and failed and had to go home. I’ve never heard.

Josh:                      It does happen.

Justin:                   They don’t talk about it that much.

Josh:                      They try. Yeah. You will never hear about those people either, right? Unless you actually like, get to communicate with them more, at least maybe communicate through friends or whatever. So what we find is the once that have done the best in the ones who really give it a go are willing to work after hours.

So they’re like they go to the nine to five and then they’ll come home and they’re like I’m going to put in four hours of work right now because I want this so badly I’m going to make it happen about a while. I’m going to go ahead, I’m going to go build to niche sites and I’m going to write content about whatever I’m just going make this happen because I want it that badly.

And then they kind of ease themselves, wean themselves off a little bit, go part-time and then eventually go full-time and their businesses and then they just explode from that point on.

Jill:                          We had a guy that we were talking to from the Screw, and his name was Nick and he wanted to start .. he had grand plans to start three businesses that want to were like Yo, pair it down. But he had this cool concept or this cool thing that he did. And he calls it interval hustling. So he’s a lawyer in his day job, which is already demanding time wise. But then he has two kids and a wife.

So he puts in a full eight to 10 hours at his job. Then he comes home, and he does dinner and bath time or whatever with his kids and his wife. And he puts them bed and then he starts working on his business. And then he works like what? It was 8:00 till like midnight, and then he gets up at 5:30 and does 5:30 to 7:00. So like, obviously, that’s not for everyone but that’s the kind of dedication that that dude had to make his dreams a reality.

Justin:                   Do you think if they’re not willing to put in those additional hours, even like on the part-time hustle, then they’re not going to cut it for entrepreneurship? I mean, if you’re willing to go that far, is that a good sign or do you see people that quit their jobs walk away? Are they the ones that go I want to work four hours a week because that’s how it works.

Jill:                          I think that a common misconception that you can work four hours a week straight out of the gate and get any sort of traction because that’s just not realistic. Really, if we’re going to cut the shit, it’s not realistic.

Justin:                   I don’t know anyone that does that and is terribly successful maybe later further on down the road. But everyone I know that’s doing well as hustling.

Jill:                          Exactly. And that’s what’s required for the first few years. I know so many people say work smarter, not harder. But when you’re first building something, you a, have to get it off the ground. B, you have to figure out what it is because it’s going to constantly change and evolve and then c, you need to figure out what your systems are and all that sort of stuff. So you can eventually handed off assuming you’re not a control freak whose like, no, I need to do this myself.

But I think the people who can have a healthy balance like you don’t have to work five and a half hours after work or before work or whatever it is, but maybe like two hours after work and then on the weekends. It doesn’t have to be huge pressure to get it, generating like five figures a month before you quit your job you can, like Josh said was easier way out of it and into your full-time business.

Justin:                   This is Joe’s thing too, he thinks working part-time on your business kind of getting up and rolling is probably the better mode for smoother transition. I’ve always kind of agreed with that, I’ve got along with that. But I’ve talked to other people like Dan Andrews, Tropical MBA is like, “Np. I think you should quit. You should burn those bridges. You should really take the leap.”

And so I know there’s interesting argument about that. I’m not sure that one’s necessarily a winner. I think if you’re looking to burn those bridges, and you want to jump in and start really banking on your business and hustling that’s cool Yeah, but do you plan on doing a couple hours a day, and being on vacation the rest of the time and hanging on the beach, that’s probably not going to fly.

Josh:                      That brings up a really good point saying is an exercise you can do, and it’s just figuring out what your desires are. Because if you’re sitting there, and you don’t have a business right now but you want one, why do you want it? If the reason why is because you want sit on a beach and you want a drink cocktails where have all this free time, if that’s the reason why then you’re probably not ready.

Justin:                   You don’t necessarily need a job for that. You don’t necessarily know … sorry a business. You don’t necessarily need to be an entrepreneur for that. You could take a job whatever and if you’re able to do remotely take after your pen you can sit on the beach. You work your hours but you still on the beach you don’t need to be an entrepreneur for that.

Jill:                          I actually struggle with the whole burn your bridges, I get the theory behind it all but I doubt anyone actually does that without a plan in place and like direction for how they’re going to get to that you know coveted four figures a month, five figures a month whatever it is like you can’t just be like, “Okay I’m done I’m going to quit my job and burn my bridges and okay now what do I do?” You have to have the plan in place before you burn those bridges because otherwise you’re just going to be sitting there treading water not knowing what the F to do.

Josh:                      Yeah, we also don’t want to be that guy that is in like the silent … I hope not majority, but the guy that says go back home was tablets music.

Justin:                   I swear that was the freakiest thing for me when I went to the Philippines is I … I don’t know if you guys know, I have a storage unit right now in the US I paid for a monthly that has like apartments were goods are stocked.

Jill:                          Just in case.

Justin:                   And I’m still … no I don’t even want it anymore there but I got stuff in there like important but yeah I left it there because I was like if I have to go back my tail between my legs I got a storage, and I can take and put an apartment. That was a huge fear of failure, everyone knew I was going over to do this thing. I’m glad I didn’t have to but yeah the idea that I hope not a lot of people are doing that.

Jill:                          I think a lot of people have that fear, it’s just a natural fear. I still feel it, I still feel like am I doing the right thing or is this going to work or will anyone dig this? Everyone’s still feels that no matter what if you’re pushing your boundaries you’re always going to feel that.

Justin:                   We do that with new initiatives. Right now we’re doing this thing and faster thing and we’re having to speak like investor language. It’s so outside of my realm like I really don’t know it. So I’m like oh my, what if they’re going to laugh at me because I’m not saying the right thing I really don’t know, right.

Josh:                      What’s investor language?

Justin:                   I don’t know. Make sure you get my two in 20, What’s your …I don’t know, I don’t know if I knew it I would say.

Josh:                      It sounds exciting to me.

Justin:                   They don’t finding it now like investors don’t give two shits about keyword research don’t care about your long-term content strategy, don’t care about which monetization method using. None of that matters the numbers matter industry matters that because they want to be on top of a rising tide, but they don’t care about growth strategies. Non of that matters to them.

So when we started talking about here’s how we’re going to build on the site, here’s where … No, they don’t care. So having to like basically shut that off we don’t talk about operations we talked about … they want to know risk they want to know industry growth, that kind of thing, it’s different, it’s interesting. So we’re having to learn this, and it’s different from we’re used to talking to.

Josh:                      I’m going to create a you to me course on how to understand investor language.

Justin:                   [inaudible 00:19:52] I would take it right.

Jill:                          And STs.

Justin:                   You guys talked about Screw the Nine to Five, how did you ditch your day jobs? How did you make the leap? What’s your story?

Josh:                      Well, we kind of had his little bit different. So we had day businesses. We actually left out form of businesses to start our own business together. I initially had a company where we were dealing with software, and I had a business partner and things kind of went sour in the end, and we decided to go our separate ways, but it was kind of reaching that point, for me is kind of like my screw you moment. Is kind of like-

Justin:                   Screw you partner, I’m out of here.

Josh:                      It’s like screw this. And you know what? On his end too he was kind of like that too. He was like, screw this. I can’t do this anymore.

Justin:                   Yeah, we’re done.

Josh:                      Yeah, we’re just we’re done. Like, we got to do something different. So it’s a very similar concept to just saying screw your boss and that’s what I went through. And Jill has a pretty similar story too.

Jill:                          Well, I didn’t have a partner but I had a business that I thought I wanted. So I ran a social media management business for restaurants and bars. For 10 years before that I had been a bartender, so I started noticing that not a lot of bars and restaurants really had a social presence but they all wanted to be involved in it. They just didn’t have the time. So I was like, maybe I’ll offer that as a service. It picked up really fast. I ended up hiring one of my friends to help out. And I burned out within what? six months?

Josh:                      It’s likes six weeks.

Jill:                          And loathed it, fired all my clients and went into business with Josh, like on a whim. Just sort of, let’s do this. Screw it. We’ll figure it out.

Justin:                   You guys were on the business before the relationship or?

Jill:                          No, we weren’t dating at the time.

Justin:                   Okay, during the time he said hey, let’s start a business. That sounds like a fun idea. For day one what do you?

Jill:                          Day one, well, we started looking into what niches to get into.

Josh:                      Day one was all about affiliate marketing.

Jill:                          Yeah.

Josh:                      We started very small. It was like, What do we do? Okay, like, we want to have passive income because we want to be location dependent. So we’re like, okay, I kind of knew about SEO and stuff at the time. So I’m like, Well, why don’t we just do affiliate marketing because it’s very easy. We don’t have to stock our products or whatever. So we’re like, Okay, well, what’s the big industry? I’m skincare. Okay, let’s go into skincare. So we like board and expand domain with some ridiculous name for it… actually you know what the name is at now.

Jill:                          Please sell it for us.

Josh:                      We’re like okay well let’s just start writing content and we’ll start writing product reviews, and we start promoting these products, and it just gradually grow over time we went through so many ups and downs. Like so many Google updates, they’re the ups and downs.

Justin:                   Is there some failures to already, so you start with affiliate sites, and one of the problems with builders that you have is you’re going to have a buyer sells the same thing that failure rates too but the builders having a higher failure rate. You’re going to have more sites is just either don’t take off or they hit by Google updates that you hit by who knows what and sometimes it just doesn’t work. So it’s like it’s kind of a gamble. Did you guys get better at that over time and choosing different niches?

Josh:                      I think we got better at understanding that that was going to happen, so we did-

Jill:                          Yeah, we got better at the emotional side of things because we have about 32 sites without Screw U … Oh, sorry, without Screw the Nine to Five and all that like taken into account. We have like 32 affiliate sites so obviously a very small portion of them make a lot of money. There’s probably at least 50% that have failed.

Josh:                      I mean, we move towards scalability kind of like what you guys move towards as well is we had these big sites initially. And we’re like these are requiring so much about time, why don’t we just move towards scaling in multiple different industries and creating smaller sites. And that’s what we kind of move towards as building four to 10 page websites that we’re targeting like very low competitive keywords. We knew we could rank for them because we’re building a private blog network of the time plus we had other avenues of getting back links as well.

So we knew we had the potential to rank for those and it was like why we don’t need to create a huge site in this industry. We can just create a very small one but there are so many of these small industries we can create these around in the long run is getting better because you got to have all our eggs in one basket that will be spread out across many.

Justin:                   I know you guys have built a ton of affiliate sites I mean you recently sold a couple of sites with us, and I know you have another couple of your listing with us. I know you guys are moving a bit away from that, you’re getting away from the affiliate site game, why? What are you looking to move on to? What’s your reasoning for that?

Jill:                          I think it’s just like the next evolution of what we wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to do something like Screw the Nine to Five, so that’s very much my gen whereas Josh really wants to build the businesses behind what we teach with Screw the Nine to Five. So his newest passion is Ecom. He really wants to get into Drop shipping. And we just fell out of love with affiliate marketing. It wasn’t cutting it for us anymore like the money is great, the money was great but just alignment of .. we just weren’t feeling aligned with it.

Jill:                          It wasn’t any bigger [crosstalk 00:24:50] that’s it. It wasn’t most he wasn’t really falling out of love with it was more like falling in love with Screw the Nine to Five a lot more. Because that really started picking up, and we realized there was so many people who wanted information on starting businesses that would tailor made to what is that they wanted to do. You know, not everyone wants to go out and start small niche affiliate sites. Not everyone wants to do that. But everyone wants to do something, they want to start some kind of online business. And that’s kind of what we’re building a framework around right now.

Justin:                   So you guys are like widening the scope of Screw the Nine to Five. Before is like, okay, affiliate sites, here’s what we do, here’s another way to do it. And you want to have a wider appeal and give you more options, because not everyone-

Josh:                      And affiliate site doesn’t resonate with everybody.

Jill:                          Well, yeah, and we pulled the audience and a very few number of people wanted affiliate marketing training.

Justin:                   That’s so funny. So you were like, affiliate stuff, affiliate stuff, like nah, that’s now what we want to know about it. I love you guys. But yeah,

Jill:                          It’s weird because they were signing out to affiliate webinars. They were signing up to auto responders for learning how to build affiliate sites. And I think maybe the terminology was just a tad confusing to them because not everyone knows what affiliate sites is or niche site or affiliate marketing they don’t know that sort of stuff. So they’re like yeah I want to make money online, sign up.

Josh:                      Yeah, I want to sell online business, sign up.

Jill:                          Once we finally pulled them and we’re like what would you like to learn more about affiliate marketing they’re like, nothing.

Josh:                      Shout out to one who had nothing.

Jill:                          We want this so we listened and that’s how our current programs Screw U was born.

Justin:                   It just goes to show you like how much should be asking your audience unlike Joe and I find ourselves sometimes like we donk our way and it takes. Finally we hear it so many times people don’t like we want this, I will pay you for that and finally were like you know what? Hey Joe we should do this great idea when we’ve been told this like 15 times.

Josh:                      That’s such a great idea Justin. You just came up with that out of set?

Justin:                   That’s amazing. It’s crazy, right. Yeah, pull your audience ask then what they want and they’ll tell and they’ll pay for it. Okay, so you guys have done the affiliate sites I know that you’re changing your business around a little bit right now. Can you tell me … you’ve got Screw the Nine to Five, you’ve got Screw U, which is Screw University you guys are working on which is kind of coursework. How exactly does your business work? It’s the two of you? Do you have VAs, do you have employees, apprentices? What’s the deal here?

Jill:                          Yep. So we have my right hand woman is Sabrina and she helps me with all things like Content Management scheduling. She’s currently helping me with a lot of slides and workbooks for Screw U, that sort of stuff.

Justin:                   Does she create the content or just kind of like keep you rolling?

Jill:                          Yeah, she just keeps me rolling.

Josh:                      She’s like a lever basically.

Jill:                          she’s literally my right hand I would die without her.

Justin:                   Is she here?

Jill:                          Yeah, she’s in Chiang Mai right now.

Justin:                   Okay.

Jill:                          but we’re going our separate ways come the beginning of the new year because I want to pair down what I’m doing, and she wants to go a different way so and we’re best friends so that’s probably a good thing but then we also have a VA and then we also have video and pocket … well not no longer video editor but a podcast editor.

Justin:                   Okay.

Jill:                          Yeah, and he does a lot of our marketing videos and our sales videos and that stuff as well.

Justin:                   So that’s pretty small team

Josh:                      It’s a very, very small team.

Justin:                   Your VA were in Philippine?

Jill:                          She was in Philippines, yeah.

Josh:                      Actually we’re just in the process of rehiring again.

Jill:                          Yeah, we need to figure out the VA big thing.

Justin:                   How do you make your money? I see like Screw the Nine to Five is your marketing channel. I know that you’ve got the back end kind of like affiliate sites that are bringing in the cash, but you’re not building on any new affiliate sites today?

Jill:                          No.

Josh:                      No.

Justin:                   So how do you make money on Screw the Nine to Five?

Josh:                      Screw the Nine to Five is made through different ways. So one we promote products and services through Screw the Nine to Five. So we recommend products and services.

Justin:                   Hosting.

Josh:                      Hosting, all that kind of stuff, yep. So anything that we use in our business we mentioned on our site. And then the other way is through programs as well. We did used to have services we had SEO Services, we’re actually offering back links on like a private blog network, we’re offering site setups and all that kind of stuff that you know, neither one of us wanted to deal with the headaches were involved with services, so we moved away from that and move towards the current model which is online programs and services, memberships.

Justin:                   Cool. You’re doing membership sites now?

Jill:                          Well, we had … so our first program … actually our first program that didn’t have a horrible miserable flop was called, Lifestyle Affiliate and that taught our process for creating these niche sites and like really scaling them up in the process for that.

Justin:                   Was that free or paid?

Jill:                          That was paid.

Justin:                   Okay.

Jill:                          Yeah. I don’t even want to listen price because it’s so there’s three iterations, fuck it. So we had lifestyle affiliate that teaches the whole process and then we just recently opened up the pilot program to Screw U and that is getting people and teaching them how, the actual how, the step by step process of building a business online around things like email marketing and webinars and digital programs and outsourcing and all that sort of stuff.

But it’s not just like the conceptual side of things like oh, this is what you should do and then you’re still left to go figure it out. We wanted to show you actually how you do it. So how you do Facebook ads, how you run webinars, how you set up an opt in box on your site, like all these little intricacies that you usually have to YouTube tutorials for.

Josh:                      So the basic framework for it is taking other what you’re passionate about on that. People are very against, a lot of people out there are very against passion projects and whatnot but they do work occasionally and we have seen either taking what your passion is or taking what you know. Like what you know, what you’ve been doing a new job for a long time or whatever and then finding out how you can turn that into an online business. What type of online business is that particular industry best used for.

Justin:                   So you’ll be helping people match their passions, their skill set, and what’s monetizable. What can actually make money.

Josh:                      Exactly, yeah.

Justin:                   They’ll pay for.

Jill:                          And we also have Josh’s Ecom site, so that’s starting to bring cash as well.

Justin:                   So you got an Ecom site that is starting to … because your strategy is get Ecom site.

Jill:                          Yes.

Justin:                   Is source products is this Drop shipping?

Jill:                          Drop shipping.

Justin:                   Drop shipping, okay.

Josh:                      Yeah, [crosstalk 00:30:51].

Justin:                   That’s kind of like a lightweight version. Some else gets the product they ship it under my name, but if it’s good, you can expand it and get better margins than [crosstalk 00:31:01].

Josh:                      You can. I think the scalability of those sites is very high as well because the transition overs is so easy. Plus you can use lots of different sources of traffic. You don’t have to just stick with SEO. You can have AdWords, you can have Facebook ads, you can do lots of different things with online store that you can’t do with small niche affiliate sites.

Justin:                   This whole thing is just so crazy. So you got like Anton and the drop ship livestock crowd and he’s like saying drop shipping the shit man you guys got to get on this it’s awesome you got a bunch of building out drop shipping sites. You got other guys going on drop shipping is old, that stuff doesn’t work anymore, Amazon’s going crush you like a bug right? Just so funny because I mean there’s so many different ways to make money and then someone says oh that’s dead. It doesn’t necessarily mean it works with AdSense sites were ridiculous when we started like there’s no way you’re going make money with AdSense sites. Sure.

Jill:                          They were like, “We are going to make money.”

Justin:                   Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that I wouldn’t listen to you. But I mean they’re just so many different ways to skin the cat. So it’s clear getting a drop shipping. I think those are pretty expandable to you can eventually source your own goods and create like a full on brand. My buddy Mark Brennanwall here, he has a nice little brand or from South it’s pretty cool with the Wad Nation stuff.

Josh:                      Yeah for sure. I mean there’s a bunch of people I’ve met here too. Another guy in Canada has Canada’s biggest online hammock store. He lives here and he outsourced most of your stuff and does quite well. So I mean there’s opportunities that we use as opportunities everything. We’re not leaving affiliate marketing because we feel like it’s over. It’s not over, it’s actually growing if anything. So I think there’s actually more opportunities now where we’re kind of moving away from that because we’re seeing that the growth of our business is related to other areas of the industry.

Justin:                   Okay, so I think I got a pretty good grasp on like your business overall, how you guys are making money the plan is to mostly go into or like to really focus on the Screw University and the eCommerce on your side. That’s where you’re really going to focus on.

Josh:                      Yeah.

Justin:                   Okay, so tell me when you guys start doing affiliate sites up through today and we talked about like the entrepreneurial roller coaster it just all over the place right and you guys are going through it and then relationship in your marriage and your business partnership and your business overall. What was one of the like getting Vic the lowest points Getting Started was it further down the road it was an earlier on when you’re getting started?

Jill:                          I think there’s been a few.

Justin:                   There’s been a few?

Josh:                      It’s hard I mean there’s a few standout ones but do you think?

Jill:                          Mine is BGP, you go first. Don’t tell mine though.

Josh:                      I think the first one for me is when we first hit five figures a month with affiliate marketing we’re like oh this is awesome and then it was like a month later there was a massive Google update then we just got slapped the hell out of-

Jill:                          Like son of a bitch.

Josh:                      That was probably the first ones. I mean-

Justin:                   how big was it like?

Josh:                      It was like 12,000 to 2000. We lost like maybe 50%, yeah, so it’s pretty big right?

Jill:                          Noticeable.

Josh:                      It’s noticeable. It is noticeable but I mean we built back up over time, anyway. So going through that experience me was quite challenging. It’s probably kind of like shapes me right now because I don’t want to just rely on Google traffic. I just don’t want to rely on that. I want to move towards other things. So that was probably the biggest one for me.

Jill:                          For me, mine was with Screw obviously, because that’s like my baby. But the one I mentioned before where we had a horrible humiliating flop. We created a product around guest blogging because we had huge success using guest blogging with our affiliate site. So we’re like, oh, surely people want to know more about guest blogging? Notice how I said we didn’t ask anyone. So we didn’t ask anyone. And we sunk five grand into it. And four months of non-stop work.

Josh:                      Is a time that was an issue.

Jill:                          Yeah, and I remember waking up that day and just having this like crazy gut feeling that shit we did this totally wrong and that first day not one person bought, and it sucked the most because we were so sure that it was going to be a huge thing that we’re telling everyone, We have a big launch coming up.

Josh:                      It’s going to be massive.

Jill:                          Wicked. My parents were here. And they were like, “Oh, Jill is going make money.”

Justin:                   Thank God.

Josh:                      God is faithful.

Jill:                          That day rolled around and not one person bought. My mom called me up. And she’s like, “How’s it going?” And I was like, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Josh:                      The person you don’t want … recently, very recently, we were going to launch our new redesign, right? We got our whole team together. And the development teams office raw. There were two pizza, Warner and beers. We’re not going watch, not good enough. So that when we do it again, like two weeks later, we all meet up we’re going to do it again. Finally we end up launching like, nope, we’re not getting anybody together.

Jill:                          No beer.

Josh:                      There’s no beer, no nothing. Let’s just let’s see it actually happen this time. Yeah, embarrassing. I think that’s smart actually not putting that much pressure on it as well. You know, like even now we pre sold Screw U, so were like, oh, let’s just pre sell it and see if people want to buy it.

Justin:                   That’s great.

Josh:                      That we’re not going to lie.

Jill:                          To make sure we don’t sink in the next four months.

Josh:                      We don’t spend the next four months trying to build out something people don’t actually want. I think especially in there and marketing, but like just an online business in general people put way too much weight on a launch. I’m cool with the slow burn, right? So yeah, let’s let’s just get it going. That’s kind of like start build over time. And if you can iterate and you’re delivering what people want then you’re going to keep more of those customers that you get. If you launch and like it’s not really what people want or it’s not really what you wanted it to be. They’re going to comic I wasn’t really what I was looking for where it’s like over time if you can build it up you’re going to get your stickiness and[crosstalk 00:36:44].

Jill:                          A hundred percent. I think that’s the best part about I’m calling them the OGs, the original gangster so our Screw U OGs. And I’ve said to them multiple times we’ve said like, just so you know. We will always be improving this course like this is not like a flash in the pan. It’s sticking around for the next five to 10 years because we believe in it and we want to keep improving it. So if it’s not perfect this time around stick with us. You have lifetime membership you can just keep taking it. Keep brushing up on your skills and each time we learned something new like maybe we’ll put in email sequencing and rules and all this or SF something that’s maybe a bit more high level for some people starting out but down the road they probably would love to learn that sort of thing.

Justin:                   What do you think about this? There’s a question of do you go after people that are just starting off I think that’s kind of your niche right now. So people who are just looking to get started with them online business.

Jill:                          Totally.

Justin:                   Do you think that you want to help them grow with you or do you think that you’ll always be kind of tailoring your stuff and improving it for people getting started?

Josh:                      So we’re going to have … I mean, that was how we started Screw the Nine to Five was we attracted that audience.

Jill:                          More of the name itself assumes you’re in a nine to five.

Josh:                      So slide about to begin. However, what we’re hoping to eventually do is attract an audience of people who already have businesses and want to take to the next level, which is Screw U. As Jill said, we’re going to continue to build up over time, we’re not going to put just so much emphasis on this one launch like we did, will continue to build it and continue to get new members in. And we’re going to have different levels as well.

So there will be something that is tailor-made to people who are just getting started. But then there’ll be something much higher end of that as well. And then something even higher off that we’re going to start eventually doing monthly masterminds with people who are really serious about their businesses and can afford something of a high price point as well.

Justin:                   So you’re going to have a higher price point, kind of like more senior kind of like inner circle type group or whatever. And then you have like the larger group of people getting started helping each other out?

Jill:                          Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Josh:                      Because there is a natural progression that people go through, so why not tailor make it to wherever people are at that time?

Justin:                   Why you guys like, What?

Jill:                          Why the hell not?

Justin:                   Why are you guys the one wants to do say Screw the Nine to Five and leave their jobs. I get that you guys are quirky, you guys are funny, you guys work well together, I mean is that it? Is that they’re kind of like a people that in your university and be drawn to that and like the way you guys present things?

Jill:                          I think personally just reading the emails I get into I literally think obviously so many sites out there that teach this sort of thing but because Josh and I are a couple and because we are wacky, and we swear, and we keep it real, that differentiates ourselves right off the bat. There’s not that many couples out there teaching this sort of thing. Our audiences heavily couple base because there’s no one out there they really relate to. So-

Justin:                   I relate with it. My girlfriend and I were watching and was like, “Honey, you got to check this out guys are awesome, right?” And so I get that.

Jill:                          Yeah, and I think also because we really try to focus on the training like we really want to show you how to do it. Where I think a lot of sites that teach the concepts or the theory behind it all like, ” out your ideal customer avatar.” Like that stuff is great. It’s foundational, but I want to know, like, how do I create a Facebook ad? How do I install an opt in box? How do I set up this? How do I build a website? How do I blah, blah, blah? You know, how do I get traffic? I want to know the how.

So we really tried to make Screw U based around that sort of stuff. We are driven by this, it sounds so lame, but we’re driven by a mission to help people get out of their jobs and do this, and the easiest way for us to do that is to teach them everything we freaking know.

Josh:                      Yeah, and I think from an audience standpoint we want to continue to build businesses outside of Screw U. Yes, we just talked about here like I’m going to setting up eCommerce. We’re not just teaches you know what I mean? I think we want to be known for just being teachers like it’s crazy thing, in our minds we are like maybe we are good at teaching, but we don’t want to just be teachers. We want to actually do it.

Justin:                   But why? Why do you want to have to? I mean, okay. Oh, yeah, give you the case. Right. So, Dan Andrews shop Columbia those guys are solely eCommerce businesses know one cares, like some of them say, Oh, well, they need to keep doing eCommerce. So they’re still close the commerce and then you talk about eCommerce, bullshit. They’re talking about eCommerce anymore, they’re trying to build a community of people that are expert entrepreneurs.

And that’s their thing, right? And they’re not doing that thing. What are they doing? Like, why are you song cat furniture? Right? So I’m thinking if this is your thing and I don’t know that this is your thing, but if it is ultimately your thing, and helping other people Screw the Nine to Five that seems like pretty meaningful. I’m like, why would you sell hammocks or whatever Drop shipping? I’m not being young man, but you know what I mean like.

Josh:                      People need hammocks.

Justin:                   How dare you say that , I don’t get it. But I see that as being a really interesting like a metric of your business should be how many people quit their jobs and started as a lifestyle they dreamed of. How do you count that? How much … at what level do they need to get … maybe they determine it themselves. But at what point did they do that? Did you help them achieve that? And you keep that count on your site? That’s cool to me.

Jill:                          Yeah, that’s a really good idea. I think, Well, this was useful. Thanks, Justin.

Justin:                   That would be awesome. I can see. Okay, 72 people have done it. And you explain what the metrics mean. You count then and you really help them do it. And that, I mean, that’s fucking matters to people.

Jill:                          Yeah. And that’s a really good fucking idea.

Justin:                   Yeah, I dig it. All right, so let’s get back to it. That [inaudible 00:42:28] thing. Let’s get back to like

Jill:                          Masterminding and podcasting all the same.

Justin:                   Let’s get back to the relationship stuff. So Joe and I I’ve had problems where we trip over each other, right? So I’m working on something, and we don’t talk about find out he’s working on something we’re like, Well, that was pretty stupid. You spend three hours of our time on the same damn thing. How do you guys keep from doing that?

Jill:                          Well, we’re lucky because our strengths are totally opposite of each other’s. Josh, I call him the SEOO because that is his thing like tech and SEO is very … and strategy now is very much his thing. Whereas I’m very much the content marketing and branding and relationship building side of things. So we don’t really cross swords.

Josh:                      To answer your question I feel confident that Jill isn’t going to go in entrepreneur and figure out how to set up [inaudible 00:43:17].

Jill:                          F that.

Josh:                      And she probably feels confident that I’m not going to go and write a piece of content because I can’t right. I think it would be a lot harder for some people, if they’re business partners had same slow similar strengths, you’d have to kind of figure out okay, look, I think you need to focus on this because we need someone to really focus on this. And I know that both of us want to do this, but we need one of us to decide we have to go ahead and do this one.

Jill:                          I think when you’re dealing with that, I think it’s really useful to do one of those like Strength Finder tests so that you can start to locate where each person excels.

Justin:                   Like a personality test?

Jill:                          Well, like the Strengths Finder, you know that Strengths Finder test? Put it in the show notes. There’s a Strength Finder Test guys.

Josh:                      Where your skills are and they kind of focused.

Jill:                          Yeah, I just can’t remember what it’s called.

Justin:                   There’s overlap though , there’s always some overlaps.

Jill:                          For sure. But if you define roles, like if you keep that clear cut and this is their role and this is your role and you don’t you know cross each other’s lines and so keep things pretty I mean sometimes I tumble in your side of things.

Josh:                      Sometimes I do is too. Sometimes I’ll jump in and say something and I’m like that’s a dickish thing to say like she’s handling this she knows what she’s doing.

Jill:                          I’m like know your role bitch.

Justin:                   What do you to remind yourself that like we talked about in our last podcast It was a wake up call it divide and conquer were like sometimes I see Joe do something, and I went I’m like dude really is that how you did it? And then I have to remind myself I’m thankful he’s there to do it at all because like if maybe it’s not how I wanted it but maybe a, it turns out better and b, I’m going have done it at all at the end of been there to do for me so like I should be thankful.

Josh:                      I like that mentality like being grateful for the fact that you have someone would actually doing it.

Justin:                   That’s nice Justin talking, not nice Justin Is like what the hell are you doing? But I mean no harm.

Josh:                      Gosh, it’s business.

Jill:                          We sure do.

Justin:                   How do you guys make big decisions when it’s something that you really disagree about? Like it’s not like just kind of maybe Josh, you’re really for it but you go that’s fine whatever but when you are just budding heads saying no direction of company kind of shed we need to go this, right and you’re saying I need to go left. How do you come to compromise?

Jill:                          I like to bring in the rule happy wife happy life.

Josh:                      Is not rule it’s a law.

Jill:                          It’s a mantra.

Josh:                      So I reckon anytime we’ve kind of come across a situation like that we’ve butted heads it’s usually because one of us or both of us have been emotionally unstable like slightly emotionally unstable at that time. The best thing to do is to just wait to the next day and then see how clear you are thinking. And then maybe one of you will be like, Oh, you know, I think you’re right. Actually, let’s go down. Let’s do what you said. That does happen a lot actually, we noticed that.

Jill:                          I actually, if you can take a minute to examine why you’re so against it. When I do that, I usually find that I’m feeling resistant to something because it’s a, uncomfortable or b, it’s going to cause growth. And so I’ve used that kind of as a compass now. Like if there’s a fundamental disagreement as to the direction of Screw, I’m going to win that one because that’s my side of things whereas if Josh wants to take a fundamental shift in Ecom, I’m going let him make that decision because that’s his side.

Justin:                   Because you have no idea.

Josh:                      That too.

Jill:                          But we always set out saying like, that’s my number one thing. My number one focus is Screw the Nine to Five. Josh’s number one focus is the businesses behind it and then number two is Screw the Nine to Five. We’ve always come to decision that if there’s like, one of those critical decisions that needs to be made, whoever’s project it is usually has the going say over that thing. And I think if you can really examine why you feel so against it, then it helps to give you clarity as to how you can ease that disagreement.

Josh:                      I mean, I personally think it comes down to occasionally one of you, or both, you’re feeling a little bit off and you’ve … because you’re always making decisions throughout the day, right? And occasionally, a really big decision may happen when you feeling it off. And when that does happen, you’re going to get a little bit defensive and you’re going to say, No, we have to do this way, we have to do this way.

Justin:                   Or certain ego gets involved. That can be problematic. Joe and I were talking about this and often there’s a lack of trust. When there’s a lack of trust, and those things tend to pop up to. So it’s more of like, maybe we’re bucking each other just because we don’t trust the other person at that time right now, shorter periods there’s a lack of trust. So you’re saying the next day might be better? Like, yeah, that’s cool, man.

Josh:                      Yeah. So why do we even have that argument?

Justin:                   All right, so you guys have been doing this now for how long? Several years?

Jill:                          Almost three years.

Justin:                   That’s cool. So what’s the long term goal with Screw, Screw the Nine to Five. What do you guys up to? What do you all about?

Jill:                          Okay, so I’m going to … can I answer this one. It’s my jam.

Justin:                   This your stuff.

Jill:                          Yeah.

Josh:                      Happy wife happy life.

Jill:                          Exactly. So in my eyes, what I would love is obviously we have Screw U and that will be a long term thing. But I would love to get into high end retreats for couples who wanted talk business and have some fun.

Justin:                   That’s fun.

Jill:                          Yeah, I really dig it. I haven’t found another one out there like it. If someone has it please drop a comment because I would love to check it out.

Justin:                   Are there membership groups for couples? Are there like a couple entrepreneurs? That seemed like it was pretty niche.

Jill:                          Couplepreneurs.

Josh:                      It’s pretty niche.

Justin:                   It is super niche.

Jill:                          But I think it’s the rising tides.

Justin:                   It is the rising tide for sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s a lot of people think about, like, how many people will you know, like mostly guys who in the entrepreneurial space that are single because they can’t find someone who can do … who does what they do? Yeah, and matchmaking for entrepreneurs.

Jill:                          And I really also want to get into masterminds like we discussed earlier. So retreats, masterminds and the digital product, and who the hell knows, speaking, who knows?

Josh:                      It definitely big thing for us is the only project that we’re going to be working on for the next few years is going to be Screw U. Screw U is going to be the hub. Is going to be like the thing that we put everything into over the next few years. We’re going to continue to grow that out and then-

Jill:                          And masterminds and live events.

Justin:                   When is this live? When is Screw U live?

Jill:                          Yeah, so it launches November 18th for the public launch. We had our presale, just last week … last week? Two weeks ago?

Josh:                      Two weeks ago.

Jill:                          So we have our first like, 25 beta testers in there right now who are we’re helping … they’re helping us to create it alongside them. Like we [crosstalk 00:50:04].

Justin:                   They’re going have ownership of this too, right? I mean, they’re going to be a piece of it.

Jill:                          Yeah. It’s hoped.

Justin:                   But, but it’s like, kind of their long term thing there along for the ride. And they probably known you for you guys for a while. to be successful because it’s going to be part of their success.

Josh:                      We actually want to see them successful because if they’re successful, then we know Screw U will be successful.

Justin:                   Yeah.

Jill:                          And it’s fun because when you get that, like, first initial community in there, they’re like, forming accountability groups and masterminds already in and I’m like, homies, you’ve been in there for two weeks, I can imagine what will happen once the contents actually available. Because like I said, we pre-sold it so there’s nothing really. They bought in off it off an idea.

Justin:                   Anything I should ask you that I didn’t ask for this interview that you wish I would have? A thought I should have?

Josh:                      What’s our favorite dessert maybe? Favorite color?

Jill:                          Forget about Josh he’s been on dessert case.

Justin:                   How about this? Maybe you guys to show me your tips. I get a couple of-

Josh:                      Do you want to see my tips?

Justin:                   I want to see your tip. I love that song. There’s podcast, Screw the Nine to Five podcast, it is. Let me show you my tips.

Jill:                          Show us your tips.

Justin:                   On my, what am I here? What do you guys got for couple entrepreneurs that are looking to build a business together? What tips would you give them?

Jill:                          Oh my gosh. One would be to … what would you say? I would say divide your roles. For sure. Number one, get clear on what you want to build. Get clear on a monetization strategy as to how you can make money with it and get clear on who can do what.

Josh:                      Yeah, so personalities like a very important thing. You’ve been dating this person, you’ve been married to this person for quite some time already. So you really understand the personality. People have very different personalities when it comes to business. You know how people react to things is much more different. So understanding your partner’s business personality as opposed to your relationship personality. That’s a big thing.

Jill:                          Yeah.

Justin:                   Cool, guys. Well, thank you so much.

Jill:                          Thanks for having us.

Justin:                   Yeah, if you want to check it out, check it out at screwtheninetofive.com. We’re also on iTunes screwtheninetofive podcasts. We really appreciate having you guys on.

Jill:                          Thanks for having us.

Josh:                      Thanks for having us.

Jill:                          So much fun.

Justin:                   All right. Let’s get into news and updates.

Speaker 2:           You’ve been listening to the Empire podcast. Now some news and updates.

Justin:                   Our first addition and pretty clear at the top of the show we got some new intros, outros and bumpers, buddy.

Joe:                        Yeah, I love that sexy voice, right?

Justin:                   Sexy voice. We got Carl over at podcastIntros.com. He actually reach out to us, he’s a fan of the show. He was creating this and want to see if he could you know use as a test case on testimonial. I first were like, yeah, I don’t know man I was right.

Joe:                        I have to say I was thinking yeah, no way this is going to fail. And I said well you know what, I’ll give them a shot.

Justin:                   Yeah, we were in the process of getting some bumpers done, and we were going to order from voice 123 and go down the rabbit hole there, and we are with cartridge and I wish you know why not give it a shot and I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. So anyway, if you want to check it out, reach out to Carl over at podcastIntro.com. I think for the intro and outro. It’s 135 bucks and that includes the male or female voice recording. So it’s a really good deal. And we’re really happy with it. So let us know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Joe:                        Yeah, and thank you so much, Carl.

Justin:                   The next bit of news and updates we’ve got is we’ve got a ton of events coming up, buddy. If anyone wants to come to any of these, we’d love to have you. I’m currently in Chiang Mai, you’re joining me at the end of this week. We’ve got a Empire workshop going on October 7th, here in Chiang Mai, we’re actually going to be at the Shangri La, buddy. So it’s a nice sweet hotel. We’ve got lined up, we got the reservation there. So that’ll be really fun. We’ve got the Drop Ship Lifestyle retreat. We’ve got Anton and crew coming out here October 7th to 10th. We’re going to be spent some time with them and hanging out with them while they’re here. So yeah, I’m really excited about it.

Joe:                        Yeah, I’m very excited about these events. We’ve got some American tour dates coming up as well. So that should be really, really cool and yeah, please come out join us, and we’d love to hear from you, meet you that kind of thing.

Justin:                   Yeah, October 15th we’re going to be in Bangkok. 15th through 19th we’re going to be in Las Vegas. The 23rd to the 26 will be in Los Angeles the 28th. So if you’re in or around those places do you reach out to us, and we’d love to chat. Next bit of info you know Dan Norris over at WPCurve.com. He offers a nice service that helps people with some of the technical aspects of their WordPress sites. Anyway, he’s been working on a book for a while now, he finally has got it out. It’s called, The 7 Day Startup.

Most of us know, Dan and our friends. We’ve seen him go through like multiple businesses where he started this one a little bit and start that one, and he do like a lot of behind the scenes and had made some mistakes, but he was such a cool cat, a good marketer that like everyone’s rooting for him, and then he just went on this tear. Where started creating businesses just out of nowhere and just launching, launching, launching.

And you know WP curve is one of those businesses, and it just crushed it so we picked up a co founder start doing really well and he’s got a book out now. So I’m actually this is one of the books I’m going to be reading its second in line but it’s free this week only, I’ve got a link to that in our show notes can check it out, but it’s called, The 7 Day startup, and I’m really looking forward to reading it. You going to check it out buddy?

Joe:                        Yeah, maybe something I can read on the plane along with all the other stuff I’m supposed to read and listen to. But I definitely think if anyone could do a 7 Day Startup book it’s Dan Norris because he definitely has the experience.

Justin:                   He’s been launching, man you know it’s funny that actually today I got a great like counterpoint article. there’s a girl names Cat. she’s at heyImcat.com and the title of her blog posts was called, It’s Called Ship, Not Shit is the title. Anyway, her argument is that you know there and other people have argued this to that there’s counter argument to the whole you know, minimum viable product position.

She argues that too many people are launching shit, right? Instead of actually putting some love into the products. And so she’s saying that MVP should actually be an MLP, Minimum Lovable Product. And it’s a better way to position or think about it rather than, just being viable. Right, because what does viable mean?

Joe:                        Yeah, I think that’s interesting angle. And I think probably a lot of people have abused it. But still, as a business owner, I want to see it H=Ship you know what I mean? I haven’t read the article yet. And I definitely have to dig into it a little bit more. And I’m sure it’s a great way to present it. But you definitely could get caught up in the new show when you’re trying to ship the software, especially software where you just take way too long to get stuff to market.

Justin:                   Yeah, I think the interesting point is that most people are going to take much too long to launch or to ship, and they’re going to do all this stuff in the back end and they’re not, testing that are asking their customers or potential customers along the way. The MVP model is better because more people need that right? More people will take too long the ship, they wouldn’t ship at all, they wouldn’t be doing the testing that’s needed. But, with all of the talk about that, it seems like maybe the tides of terms are the tables have shifted. And so there’s a need to remember that we need to deliver, products that people love that people share that people are interested in. So, you know, just delivering something isn’t great and viable. Maybe the wording could be changed there.

We actually had to fan mentioned that you and I both listen to this one over at brandingcow.com, where we listened to a couple of podcasters dissect our new brand. And so they dug through our brand, our podcast and look for kind of in consistencies, talked about what they liked and didn’t like, and it was really interesting to have a couple of people in my ear buds, talking about our business with us nothing basically just kind of like digging through our company and the first emotion to it. I was like, Hey, what do they know they’re wrong here.

They’re wrong there but as I listened to it. There were a couple of things that I thought were spot on and they were things we were working on, for example, making sure that our podcast title matches you know everything else. Make sure artwork match and they just hadn’t been done because we were like in the middle of the branding shift. But yeah, reminding us a few of those things that we need to get done, I thought was pretty helpful, actually.

Joe:                        Yeah, it’s an interesting podcast because one of the co-hosts knows us very well. He’s followed us for a while since through the AdSense flippers, so he understood a lot of the branding decisions that we made whereas the girl she was totally new and didn’t understand it at all and was like, what’s a flipper? You know.

Justin:                   She was like slippers? Slippers are those not the thing you put on your feet and kick her out in the water, and I was like, Oh my God, oh God, this girl but I don’t know it was interesting. It was interesting from someone that’s brand new to our business you know kind of what they think about it so I don’t know man, we’re not changing that it is what it is, but I’ll take point. Let’s move into some listener shouts buddy.

Joe:                        Hit me up man.

Justin:                   So on Twitter we had Mike [Mielleho 00:59:07] he had dug the book share from Dan Norris said, “Awesome share thank you.” If guys are interested in that make sure you check that out this week because it’s free, and you can get your free copy. We got Thomas our website buyer mentioned in Zendesk and our support service … support system, “Services first class and I will be pursuing more options.” Thanks so much Thomas. And then we’ve got Vincent, who will be joining us at our empire workshop in Los Angeles, “Is great support fast reply.” Thanks so much. I’m really looking forward to meeting Vince and everyone else on our travels, man we’re doing the tour. So, that’ll be pretty exciting.

Joe:                        It will be fun.

Justin:                   All right, that’s it for Episode 112 of the Empire podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We’ll be back next week with another show. You can find the show notes for this episode and more at Empire flippers.com/group and make sure to follow us on Twitter at Empire Flippers. See you next week.

Joe:                        Bye. Bye everybody.

Speaker 2:           Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Empire podcast with Justin and Joe. Hit up empireflippers.com for more. That’s empireflippers.com. Thanks for listening.